The role of a lifetime.
When the book is finally closed on actors who gave everything to their art, who really dug deep and fearlessly committed, who went there, you can bet that Nicolas Cage will feature heavily.
Few performers are so brave in their choices, for better and for worse. Cage has done it all; comedy, drama, horror, action, animation, straight-to-video hell, won an Oscar along the way, you name it.
He’s even appeared as two different characters in the same movie, that being 2002’s indie drama Adaptation. What he hasn’t done, somehow, is play himself.
Don’t worry, that’s coming.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that Cage is currently in negotiations to star as himself in a “meta movie project” by the name of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
Should the 55-year-old put pen to paper, he will portray Nicolas Cage as he tries to land a role in the new Quentin Tarantino film.
He’s also dealing with a difficult relationship with his teenage daughter in addition to a 1990s vision of himself that gives him hell over poor career choices.
On top of that, the character is in tremendous debt and is forced to entertain a Mexican billionaire who is also apparently a drug lord that wants to get Cage into a movie that he’s been writing.
Oh, and there’s a kidnap plot and a “lives on the line” situation involving Cage’s daughter and ex-wife, not to mention references to real-life films such as Face/Off and Leaving Las Vegas.
Got all that? Good.
Lionsgate is the studio at the front of this thing and it has been reported that the company “pushed aside several suitors” in order to make Cage the top priority.
Cage, if he sees this one through, will enjoy not only a handsome pay-day but will finally see himself at the centre of a major live-action studio project for the first time since 2011’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
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